Rabbi Shmuel Lew relates:

Raising children can be difficult. It happened sometimes that I would lose my temper with my kids, even feeling the urge to hit them, G-d forbid. I felt terrible about it… The main thing was that I had, thank G-d, a very beautiful, warm, relationship with all of them, but I felt very bad…

I went to the Rebbe yechidus; this was Friday afternoon, the day after Shavuos, 5733. I went into the Rebbe’s room with my sons, and I wrote that I was very concerned about my weakness of losing my temper, even sometimes striking them. [I wrote that] I felt that it was bad in its own right, and the potential effect it could have is bad as well.

The Rebbe told me a point which is very profound in chinuch, in general—how to look at your child or your students. Generally, the way of Chabad is _hisbonenus,_ contemplation, that every problem has a solution which comes about through cultivating the appropriate _hisbonenus._ (The Rebbe didn’t say that, that’s my own understanding.)

The Rebbe said, “One of the _hisbonenus’in_ is to contemplate, that as much as they are your children, they are Hashem’s children even more so. The possuk says, _’Bonim atem laHashem Eloikeichem’,_ ‘You are children of Hashem your G-d’. You would not strike the children of a fellow human being—how much more so the Aibishter’s children!